Everyhing

Question

Do these two equally work and have the same meaning?She is indifferent to anything.She is indifferent to everything.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

They seem to have similar meanings, but the first one feels incomplete, as if it said: She is indifferent to whatever ...

Without a preceding negation, 'anything' doesn't seem to have exactly the same force as a universal quantifier. It has a "no matter what" meaning.

She is indifferent to [ anything / whatever ] you might suggest.
She is indifferent to anything of the kind. ~ No matter what it is of that kind, she is indifferent to it.
She is indifferent to anything like that. ~ No matter what it is that is like that, she is indifferent to it.
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What seems odd is that sometimes it doesn't matter which of the two you use.

She will ignore anything you say. = No matter what you say, she will ignore it.
She will ignore everything you say. = She will ignore all those things that you say.

In practical terms, the result is the same, even though the speaker can approach it by two different pathways. 'any' says it in more hypothetical terms perhaps.
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'anything' goes better with a negation if it's to be a universal quantifier.

She is not interested in anything.
= She finds everything uninteresting.

CJ

Taka · Answer

CalifJim...Without a preceding negation, 'anything' doesn't seem to have exactly the same force as a universal quantifier.

Isn't it possible to take 'indifference' as a kind of negation?

CalifJim · Answer

TakaIsn't it possible to take 'indifference' as a kind of negation?

Not for our purposes here, no. The prefix in- is not taken as a negation here in modern English because we don't have the pair

She was indifferent to what I said / *She was different to what I said.

And even if it were, that still wouldn't work. You have to have the negation of the verb.

CJ

Taka · Answer

Semantically, 'indifferent' is similar to 'not (really) interested', isn't it?

CalifJim · Answer

TakaSemantically, 'indifferent' is similar to 'not (really) interested', isn't it?

I suppose there is a similarity. I take it ("indifferent") to indicate the idea of not caring one way or the other about things -- neither positive nor negative about a given topic.

CJ

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